


What You Wish For

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-15
Updated: 2008-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam used to wish that Dean would settle down somewhere close by so they could be a family like all the others. This isn't what he meant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Brother's Keeper

**Author's Note:**

> This is AU from the Pilot episode. I looked up the general requirements of the residency program, but I have never actually been to Stanford University Hospital. I may have taken quite a few liberties with how it looks or how staff actually handles these kinds of situations. I tried to generalize off of the experience I do have, which is based off of the New York State system.

_ I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much._  
Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997)

Sam felt numb as he watched the firemen try to put out the flames. He couldn't quite process what he had seen, though he knew it had to be something important. These kinds of things hadn't happened to him at Stanford before, and Jessica knew _nothing_ of his former hunting life. The power behind what had killed her had to be immense. She had still been alive, pinned to the ceiling, bleeding from the abdominal wound slowly. He knew that a slash across her belly should have sent her insides spilling out, should have caused tremendous blood loss. He knew she wouldn't have been to try and move her lips before the fires spilled out around her. He couldn't get the picture out of his mind, even if he could never, ever tell anyone about it.

The EMT's were too late, of course. They wanted to try and treat him for smoke inhalation, to assist police in getting statements from him and Dean. Dean. Sam wanted to ask how he knew to come back, how he knew that something would happen. Dean hadn't known that Jessica would be killed like that; Sam could remember the shock on Dean's face and the desperation in him as he pulled Sam to safety. Somehow Dean had known that something was going wrong and that leaving Sam would be bad.

Sam could dimly hear shouting, though it didn't sink in right away what he was hearing. He had told Dean that he would go with him, that there was nothing left for him in Stanford anymore. Oh, he had his law school interview in a few hours, but there was no way he could go to that now. That life was gone. That Sam was dead. The fire had killed him just as surely as it had killed Jessica.

He raised his eyes after a moment, when he realized that Dean wasn't joining him at the Impala. That didn't make sense, though it took a long while for it to sink in. Dean had been pulled aside by a police officer to make a statement about the fire, and it was supposed to be something quick. Sam's statement had taken less than five minutes, and the officer had made some kind of nonsensical-yet-supposedly-comforting comment meant to soothe Sam's rattled nerves. It hadn't worked. Maybe someone less prone to know what was in the dark would have let the syllables flow over them like a blanket. Someone who didn't know the dangers in the darkness would believe that the police could keep them safe. Sam knew better, though sometimes he wished he didn't. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss.

Dean was talking to a police officer, his face a mask of anger. That couldn't be right. He was always so smooth, could fast talk his way out of just about anything.

The police officer said something, and Dean's face took on a livid red color as well. This couldn't end well, not with Dean looking angry like that. Sam got up, not even aware of what he was doing, and started to approach them. _Don't do anything stupid, Dean!_

Dean took a swing at the officer, sending him right down to the ground.

Sam couldn't take in what Dean was screaming about as other police officers tried to restrain him from continuing to beat on the fallen officer. "You don't know what you're doing!" Dean shouted at them. "He's a demon! This is all his fault! He's a demon!"   
Sam's heart sank. This couldn't end any other way but badly.

Somehow Sam found himself following the ambulance to the hospital in the Impala. Dean had been swearing up a storm, needing five police officers to pin him to the ground to cuff him. His yells became incomprensible yowls of anger and frustration, and Sam had never seen Dean like that before. Even the fallen officer looked baffled, and accepted Sam's numbed apology easily. "You take care of your brother, Sam," the officer told him, rubbing at his jaw. "Something's not quite right there."

Understatement of the year, obviously.

Sam heard the yelling in triage before he even entered the emergency room. Vile curse words fell from his brother's lips and Sam could hear things being overturned and tossed around. Sam doubted that any of the medical students or residents at the university center would have known how to deal with his brother, and rushed forward as quickly as he could. He stopped when he saw the police officers trying to restrain his brother, who was still thrashing about and screaming at the top of his lungs. A petite blonde woman in scrubs and a long white coat was trying to calm the triage nurse, who was pressed as far back in the station as she could possibly get. The blonde woman gave up after a while and directed the officers to a room in a corner of the ER. Sam supposed she was the doctor in charge; she certainly didn't seem terribly ruffled by Dean's language or demeanor. She simply asked Dean if he had any allergies to medications, and Dean responded with a hearty "Fuck you!" and redoubled his efforts to evade police. Sam followed, trying to keep Dean in sight.

The blonde said something to someone in red scrubs, and the woman darted away quickly. Sam didn't know what the significance of "five and two" was, but was sure it had to be something important. His eyes tracked the red scrubbed woman, who was at some kind of medication cart. She started drawing up clear liquids from vials, and Sam had the sneaking suspicion that Dean had earned himself some kind of a sedative.

Dean had been divested of his jacket, boots, belt and jewelry while Sam was distracted. His belongings were off to the side on a chair, ignored by police and hospital staff. Big burly hospital security had come on board; Sam couldn't find any of the local police officers anywhere anymore. Dean was being strapped down to a gurney with leather restraints at his wrists and ankles. It wasn't the police officers anymore, but medical personnel in scrubs and white coats as well as hospital security. The blonde stood partway back from the thrashing Dean, but was trying her best to talk to him. She introduced herself as Dr. Corrinne Brennan and was trying to get him to agree to calm down to talk to her. Dean was much too far gone for that at this point, struggling to get out of the restraints.

"Time is three forty-five," Dr. Brennan said wearily as the red scrubbed nurse returned with the syringe of medication. The nurse pushed Dean's T shirt sleeve out of the way and swabbed at his deltoid muscle before injecting the medication. Dean spat at the nurse, but she ignored him as she worked. Sam checked his watch; the nearest fifteen minute increment to the current time was 3:45 am.

_Dean, just shut the fuck up,_ Sam wanted to say. _You're only making this worse!_ But his mouth wouldn't open and his voice was stuck in his throat. Dean looked enraged beyond all reason, and Sam couldn't understand what had started all this.

Dr. Brennan noticed Sam's lost expression after a moment, when the immediate threat was somewhat taken care of. "Do you know him?" Sam could only nod, unable to make his lips move. "Who is he?" she prompted.

"My brother," Sam said, voice hoarse and scratchy. "That's my brother, Dean."

Dr. Brennan nodded, then looked over the room. One of the nurses had come with a clipboard and paperwork and was seated on a chair near the door, watching over Dean. Most of the other staffers had already moved out of the room. "Come on, we probably need to talk."

Sam wanted to laugh, but his chest hurt too much. What the hell was going on?

In some side room, Sam sat down on an uncomfortable chair across from the doctor. He could see her ID tag now, and it clearly said "Corrinne Brennan, Psychiatry Resident." Some part of him wanted to cry as the hole in his chest seemed to grow impossibly large. They thought Dean was a psych patient. They thought he was psychotic and violent and dangerous. Right now, he certainly looked like it.

"I'm Dr. Brennan. You said that's your brother Dean in the room. What happened?" she asked, voice soft. It was just the two of them in that little side room, and Sam could imagine that patient families were often gathered in the room to discuss violent patients or suicidal patients or bad news about what happened in the ER. The room was a mind-numbing beige and the floor was nothing but cracked gray tiles flecked with black and white. The chairs were uncomfortable and Sam wanted to bolt screaming from the room, dragging Dean with him. His arms and legs refused to move.

He smelled like smoke, his clothes were rumpled, he felt numb and he knew he was walking like a zombie. Sam didn't exactly seem like a model citizen, let alone a Stanford University student poised to enter its law school. He didn't feel like it, either.

"What's your name?" she asked, trying again to engage him.

"Sam," he said, voice wooden and scratchy. "I'm a student at the university."

"Okay, Sam. Take what time you need, but I need to know what happened so I can help."

Sam looked up with empty eyes. "You can't help us, lady."

She blinked, but didn't say anything. The silence was thick around them, almost unbearable.

Sam broke it first, unable to take her steady gaze on him. "There was a fire at my apartment. My girlfriend is dead. Dean went ballistic outside. I don't know why. I need to get him out of here. You can't help us." He was aware at how bleak his voice was, how alone he felt. He didn't want to get anyone else involved. He just wanted to get _out._

"He went ballistic, you said," Dr. Brennan repeated. Sam nodded numbly. "What happened?"

Sam could remember the desperate anger in Dean's voice as he screamed while the police restrained him. _He's a demon!_

No, that would just get Dean locked up. Sam needed to get him out of there.

"Doctor, it was probably just the shock of the fire. We just got back, I have an interview in a few hours I have to cancel. It... I don't know what happened. I just need to get him out of here."

"Right now, we gave him some medicine to help him calm down," Dr. Brennan told him. Her voice was sympathetic, her expression was peaceful and conveyed that she wanted to understand. Sam could process it intellectually, but emotionally he recoiled. How dare she think she knew about them? She didn't understand it. She couldn't possibly. She was some resident, someone in training. She didn't know jack shit about Dean or what the problem could be. She didn't know anything about them and nothing about what really happened when everything went dark and still outside. She didn't know, couldn't know, and he wasn't about to tell her about it.

Sam used to wish that Dean would settle down somewhere close by so they could be a family like all the others. This isn't what he meant.

"Sam," Dr. Brennan said, leaning forward slightly, elbows perched on her knees. "Tell me about him. Tell me anything at all about what he was like before tonight."

Cocksure and insufferable. Sam's caretaker. The one that taught him everything he had known about how to lie to teachers and social workers and strangers on the street while Dad was out hunting the creatures in the dark. The one that made sure Sam could track and hunt and understand the importance of what they were doing. The one that got between him and Dad when the arguing got bad. The one that told him everything about sex and girls and how to protect himself. The one that made sure he stopped having nightmares, the one that made sure he was fed when Dad was out on a bad hunt. Dean was the one that replaced Dad after a time. Dean was the one that had no future other than hunting, the one that threw away any chance at school to try and hold their brittle little family together.

Sam rubbed at his face. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Anything. We've got a while."

If anything, those words were more chilling than anything else Dr. Brennan could have possibly said to him. Sam looked up with hopeless eyes. "We do?"

Her lips twisted into a sympathetic smile. "Those meds tend to knock people out for a few hours. He's also my only patient tonight. So luckily for you, you get my whole attention tonight." She checked her watch. "Well, for another four hours, really."

Sam gave a bitter chuckle and leaned back in the chair, his head hitting the wall. "We moved around so much growing up," he began, voice soft. He tried not to feel as if he was betraying Dean or his father, though the bitter bile inside was trying to rise. "My mother died in a fire when Dean was four. I was a baby. I don't even remember her."

"A fire," Dr. Brennan murmured when Sam lapsed into silence.

Blood across Jessica's stomach, her hair streaming out around her as she was pinned to the ceiling, her lips moving. The fire all around her, waves across the ceiling, looking almost like her hair. She was in pain, she was being tortured, and he could do nothing but lie there screaming until Dean pulled him away.

Sam rubbed at his face. "We moved around a lot. Didn't really have other family, didn't really settle anywhere. Dad did odd jobs, hunting stuff. Always made sure we went to school, knew how to take care of ourselves." Sam couldn't suppress the bitter laughter. "We knew there were things in the dark. We knew that it wasn't simple, that at any moment something could come out and get you."

"That's tough on a little kid," Dr. Brennan murmured. Sam looked down and saw she had settled into a comfortable seated position. The utter attention she was giving him seemed almost eerie, as if she was taking notes even though there was no pen or clipboard in hand.

"We knew about the boogeyman and demons and other things. The stories, I mean. They were never something to be scared of like other kids. They talked about being afraid of monsters in the closet." Sam snorted and shook his head. "That's not real."

"So it was just the three of you?"

"Yeah. Three of us, driving all over, settling down somewhere else. It was always somewhere else, and Dean felt like the only real constant. He's my big brother, even if I am taller." Sam rubbed at his face, feeling acutely disloyal. What the hell was he doing?

"Tell me about him, then. What was he like before?"

Sam gave the doctor a mournful look. "I haven't seen him in four years. I didn't... No, that's not quite right. I walked out on them because I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted normal. I wanted to be in one place, all the time, I wanted a family like everyone else's. So I bolted and left them behind, and I left Dean to pick up the pieces. So I don't know what he's like, doctor, not really, not how it counts."

She cocked her head to the side slightly. "You didn't keep any kind of contact?"

"Superficial bullshit," Sam sighed. "He was always so... confident? I guess that's the word. He never seemed out of place, no matter where we went. He always knew who the cool kids were, he always had the girlfriend. He had the smiles and the self assurance and I was the one with the books in the corner. He drove and worked and did stuff right along with Dad, and I was the one always left behind."

Dammit, he hadn't meant to sound so damn bitter.

"Did he ever seem sad to you? Like maybe that was all an act?" Sam shrugged, looking up at the ceiling. Industrial white foam tile, cracks in the corners. Dear God, he was going to have to identify Jessica's burnt remains. Sam couldn't breathe.

"Or did it seem like maybe he was too happy somehow? Anything like that?"

Sam thought maybe he was hyperventilating. The room seemed to tilt crazily. Oh God, Jessica was dead and he smelled like smoke and Dean was passed out after being treated like some kind of psychotic lunatic. And Dad was still missing, disappeared somewhere into middle America leaving the boys to flounder on their own. What a fucking role model.

"I don't know," Sam muttered hoarsely, rubbing at his face again. "I don't know. He doesn't talk about feelings or girly bullshit like that. He's tough." Sam covered his face with his hands, willing himself not to fall apart. Dean wouldn't like it. "He's always been tough. He's always been on the lookout, always protecting me. And then I left, and it was just him stuck with Dad. I left him there, stuck between us and all the arguing, when he could've been something more. He could've done something with his life, I was just too caught up in myself to think about it. I wanted out, he seemed all right where he was and I just left. I thought he was fine. They never seemed to need me anyway, so why would it matter? But it matters, doesn't it? The look on his face when I walked out with that bus ticket... I almost turned back. I almost went back and said I'd stay, but I didn't. I didn't think he needed me, and I knew Dad didn't."

"So where was Dean in all this time?" she asked, voice gentle and soft. Sam couldn't even look up, the tumble of words shaming him to silence now. "Sam? What happened to Dean while you were here at Stanford?"

"He did odd jobs, I said. Hunting, like Dad." Sam pulled his hands away from his face, grateful that she didn't seem to understand that _hunting_ was so much more for Winchester men.

"He didn't try to get in touch with you?" Sam shrugged and looked down at the floor. "How did he come to be at your apartment, then?"

"Dad went missing," Sam replied reluctantly. "He wanted my help to find Dad. I said he could go it alone, that he didn't need me. I have an interview today. I'm applying to the law school. I'm supposed to..." Sam sighed and ran his hand through his hair. God, he smelled like smoke and ash and dead dreams. "Dean didn't want to go alone. He wanted me there with him, even if Dad and I aren't on the best terms."

"Dean didn't want to be alone. He was always so confident, though."

"Yeah. So I went. I told Jess I'd be back in time for the interview, that I thought it was probably nothing. We were only gone for the weekend, really."

"Did you find your father?"

"No." Sam clasped his hands together, looking at the floor. "There wasn't anything to find."

"What do you mean?"

"There was stuff in his hotel room, but Dad wasn't there," Sam replied, voice low. "It doesn't matter. He can take care of himself. He was a Marine."

"Was Dean the same way you remember him?"

"Huh?"

"Was he acting the way he used to? Or did it seem like something was different? Was he sleeping the same? Concerned about the same things?"

Sam shrugged after a moment. "I didn't pay attention. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to be here, where things make sense and they're normal." He looked at Dr. Brennan almost wistfully, shaking his head. "I used to wish we could be normal, that we didn't move around so much and we were like everyone else. I didn't mean for this. I didn't mean for him to fall apart without me like this."

Dr. Brennan waited for a long moment, but Sam had lapsed into silence. "The police mentioned demons," she began, voice soft and almost lulling. _You can trust me,_ that tone said. It was the same tone he and Dean often used when hunting, when dealing with the poor slobs out there that got hit with things they didn't understand. _I know what this could be. Tell me what you saw so I can fix it._

Sam wanted to cry. The ache in his chest was monstrous, a neverending well of grief he would drown in if he let himself go.

"Dean was saying something about demons involved in the fire," Dr. Brennan prodded, leaning forward in her chair. She was all professional insistence and assurance. "He hit a police officer that he said was being possessed by the demon."

_We know they're real,_ Sam wanted to say. _Have you seen one? Have you hunted one? Have you had to pull the trigger and kill the host if the exorcism doesn't get rid of the damn thing once and for all?_

He remained silent. He couldn't tell her that.

"Sam, talk to me," the doctor pleaded. "Tell me what it means. I can't do anything to help Dean if I don't know what it means."

Sam shut his eyes. "They're real, you know. Demons, all that. We were taught that they're real, that they're out there. They influence people, that kind of thing."

"So you're pretty religious?"

"Something like that. Pastor Jim used to help take care of us if Dad couldn't, if he was looking for work." Sam shrugged and looked at the doctor helplessly. "But when we were old enough, it was just me and Dean. It was always just the two of us."

"No family?"

"Dad never talked about them. He got angry when we asked."

"What do you know about your extended family?"

"Nothing."

If she was frustrated, it didn't show. "Any mental illness or substance abuse?" Sam shrugged. It had never been talked about. "Anyone that you know of that tried to kill themselves?" He shook his head. "Anyone who might have gone to a psychiatric hospital?" He shook his head again, not making eye contact. He didn't know anything. No one talked about that kind of thing. His mother had died when he was a baby, and he was Dean's responsibility. That was it. It was as if there was no family anywhere.

Dr. Brennan nodded and got up. "I'm going to go check in on him, see if he's awake and ready to talk or not. Do you have anywhere to go?"

His bitter laughter hurt his own ears. He didn't know how the doctor could stand it. "My apartment is ruined. My girlfriend is dead. My dad is missing. There's no other family, nowhere to go. I've got nowhere to be but here."

She nodded. "You can stay here. I can try to get you something to eat from the ER stash if you're hungry or thirsty."

Jessica had made cookies for him. She had always been thoughtful that way.

Sam's gut twisted and he shook his head violently. "No. No, I'll be fine. I'll just stay here, if that's okay. I don't think I could see Dean strapped in like that."

"He's not hurt," Dr. Brennan assured him. "It looks scary and downright medieval, but he's not hurt. It's just to maintain his safety and that of the staff."

Sam looked up into her earnest face. She was trying to do the right thing, but didn't know what it was. She couldn't. She was still in training, right? God, it hurt to think. He rubbed at his face yet again as she walked out, leaving him to his jumbled thoughts.

When he heard Dean screaming again through the walls, it almost didn't make a dent. Sam crashed through the doors, trying to locate its source. He dimly remembered where Dean's room was, where the psychiatry ER rooms were tucked away. His feet moved on autopilot, everything around him a blur as his heart thrummed loudly in his ears. His tongue was thick in his mouth, and everything tasted like ashes.

Dr. Brennan was on the floor, calmly ordering another "five and two," as the hospital security staff swarmed around Dean and tried to buckle him back in.

Oh, Dean. Fuck.

Sam met Dr. Brennan's calm eyes with panicked ones. "What?" He looked over at Dean, who looked like he would have loved to rip everyone apart in the room with his bare hands. "Dean? I don't understand..."

Dr. Brennan had gotten back up to her feet as nurses rushed into the room. It was getting awfully crowded in the tiny space, and she ushered Sam into the adjacent hallway. "We started talking, and it seemed to be going all right for a while. Then the names started. Apparently he thinks the demon's inside of me." She looked at him with her head cocked slightly to the side. "Did that happen at all this past weekend?"

Sam shook his head, numb. Nothing made sense anymore, nothing.

"I'm sorry," Sam murmured, at a loss of what to say.

She put a hand on his arm. "I've been called a lot worse, really. I've collected names that I've been called, and his is downright ordinary in comparison." Her smile, meant to be reassuring, did nothing but make Sam's blood freeze.

"What's going to happen to my brother?" he asked, mumbling.

"This doesn't look good, you know. Whatever's been going on with your brother is still going on right now. He's pretty aggressive, he's seeing things and not making a whole lot of sense right now. He's probably going to have to go to a hospital," she continued, voice soft but firm. Sam wished he could make her take back the words. "I can wait and let the next doctor re-evaluate him, but I have to tell you, it doesn't look good."

"He doesn't have insurance," Sam found himself saying. "He's between jobs."

"We have social workers," Dr. Brennan assured him.

"Where will he go?" Sam asked, voice plaintive. "We don't have anyone else."

"I'll let you know."

It was nearly six am at that point. Dean was admitted to Stanford University Hospital's H2 unit at eleven am.


	2. Hidden Bravery

Stanford Hospital housed many departments and helped to train many a resident and medical student. H2 was the acute adult inpatient unit, and everything was locked down tight outside of the elevator banks. Sam was acutely out of his element, still smelling of smoke, still feeling vaguely guilty even though he didn't entirely understand why. The secretary at Stanford Law had been entirely too nice to him on the phone, and somehow gave Sam the feeling that he would be accepted anyway. Knowing that the interview was "really just a formality" made him feel as though his life had been plotted out ahead of time, written by someone who hadn't let him in on the joke yet.

Dean was locked away in H2, being called psychotic. The fact that he had stared at Sam with wide eyes that held no recognition hadn't helped. He was wailing about demons, that they were there to kill Sam, that he had to save Sam and it was too late for Jess.

Sam's gut twisted painfully, and he had to press his hand to the wall to keep upright. His world had unraveled, and there was no way to knit it back together again.

They wouldn't let him on the unit right away. There needs to be a staffing, the unit clerk told him in clipped and disapproving tones. Dean would need to be assessed again, a plan would have to be formulated, and the treatment team would then get back to him during visiting hours. Sam would simply have to wait, just like everyone else.

Sam sat in the waiting area by the elevator bank, hands shaking, aware that he probably looked like a psych patient himself. It was a locked unit, he had to remind himself. It wouldn't do him any good to pick the locks and walk right in. It wasn't as if he could simply walk right out with Dean on his arm. Everyone would notice.

Friends eventually got word of the fire, and Sam began fielding phone calls on his cell that afternoon. By evening visiting hours, he had a place to stay and lots of sympathy. He still felt numb, still had trouble comprehending anything as real. By the look of it, Dean was having just as much trouble. There had been codes called overhead during the day, and the nurses told Sam that they were due to Dean. He hadn't wanted to be locked into the unit, of course. He didn't think he was sick. He didn't think there was anything wrong with trying to deck the attending psychiatrist who was leading the interview for the new resident rotating into the unit. Dean had sat there perfectly calm until he snarled and swung, calling the attending a "meat suit" that needed to get the demon beat out of him.

Oh, God. Sam couldn't even contemplate the reaction the team must've had. He didn't even question it. That was so like Dean.

Sam sat by Dean's side the entire time he was allowed to. Dean was still sedated from his earlier bouts of aggression. Not knowing what else to do or where else to go, Sam sat there, staring at his sleeping brother. This had to make sense at some point, right? He had caught something somewhere about how certain symptoms would lend itself well to different diagnoses, and the differences had different prognoses. Something like that. The words from the resident had spilled over his head in a monotone mumble. They couldn't know what this was like, could they? They didn't understand the shock of it. This wasn't Dean. This couldn't be Dean. Something was very, very wrong here.

Days slid together. Dean stopped trying to attack the staff and he stopped mumbling about demons every time he saw someone. He reluctantly admitted to not sleeping or eating well in the weeks prior to his arrival at Stanford. He reluctantly admitted that he thought about death or dying sometimes. Well, sure he felt stressed or down. Sure, he wished he could've done more with his life, or that he was enough for his father or Sam. Sure, he had wanted more out of his life. Who didn't need to settle for what they had? It had always been taken for granted that he would shift about from job to job with his father and take care of Sam. And when Sam was gone and there was no one left to take care of, he was stuck in the same old place, day in and day out. Of course he had wanted more. Of course he would've wanted to settle down. But it wasn't the way fate had treated him, and there was no point to wish for something different. There was no point to any of that.

Around this same time, Sam realized that if he offered to talk with the doctors during the day, he often got a chance to visit Dean in addition to visiting hours. It tended to help calm Dean down when the treatment team was making rounds. He was easily aggravated by the procession of white coats and ties that passed his room every morning. Attendings, residents and medical students would ask how he was doing, did he sleep, did he eat, how did he _feel_ today. Some of them never even looked up from their clipboards, never made eye contact. He was a statistic, a collection of side effects to the antipsychotic and antidepressant du jour.

Major depression with psychosis was the kindest diagnosis Dean could have possibly had. Sam had gathered that straight psychosis had initially seemed more likely, and was still a striking possibility. Things seemed to settle down a bit after the first few rocky days, though Sam couldn't have recounted a single thing that anyone told him in those days. He was numb from the visits to the hospital and Jessica's funeral. He couldn't taste anything he was eating if he even remembered to eat. He couldn't meet anyone's eyes. He stopped caring about law school and his dreams of a perfectly normal life. If this was it, he didn't want it.

Dean was discharged after three weeks in the hospital. He was sent to a partial hospitalization program, where he would spend days in social groups and getting reacquainted with life outside of the hospital. He would then go stay with Sam's friends in the afternoon and evening. The social workers expected it to be a two week period before he was free and clear of all kinds of hospital, though they warned Sam that he would need to make regular clinic visits. Some part of him recoiled at such a thing; they had always shied away from doctors and clinics and anything speaking of regular visits. There had never been a sense of continuity in their formative years, nothing that would allow people to get to know them.

_You wanted normal,_ he told himself fiercely. _You wished for normal, for a steady home. Life sucks for regular people, too._

"You should meet Marianne," Dean told Sam over pizza after his first day in the partial program.

 

Sam looked up, trying to fit the words into something resembling sense. Dean was entirely too calm now. There was a sense of peace instead of panic, and that cocksure grin was gone. Sam didn't realize how much he missed it until it was gone.

Dean didn't have to pretend he was the best anymore. He knew he had been broken to pieces, he knew he was pasted back together with glue. He was some ragged thing, frayed at the edges and trying to hold on by the strength of his fingernails. There was no need for bluster and bravado anymore, and no one to fool.

Sam could feel another part of his heart break every time he looked at Dean. _If only I'd stayed,_ he thought for the thousandth time. _He'd never have gotten depressed if not for me. He'd never be like this if not for me. If I never went to Stanford..._

"Who's Marianne?"

"Volunteer at the hospital. She made a lot of sense, though. I liked her. She used to be a patient there, you know. At the partial, too, and made it through okay. Now she helps out a lot, and she talks to families. So it's not too weird, you know?"

The pizza tasted like cardboard to Sam. He didn't want to talk to anyone about this. He wanted it to go away. Even his fucked up childhood had made a certain kind of sense. Since when did mental illness?

"Promise me you'll talk to her," Dean insisted. There was a spark of his former intensity there, a hint of who he used to be.

"I'll talk to her," Sam lied.

As it turned out, Marianne found him after a week or so. She had blonde hair, vivid green eyes and was very noticeably pregnant. "Seven months along and feeling pretty good," she told him cheerfully, cornering him in the waiting area. Dean had waved at them, the bastard smiling at the pair of them, and then went inside with the others.

Dean attended groups on socialization and daily planning, job hunting and managing budgets. It was ordinary life skills, but something that he had avoided while on the road and hunting. He had never needed to learn those kinds of things, and he had approached it with awe after the initial condescension. "Dude, there's a point to a checkbook! And actual bank accounts!" he had declared one afternoon. "There might be something to this normalcy shit you were always talking about," he had said with a smile. Sam tried not to feel guilty.

"Ever deal with the system before?" Marianne asked without preamble. Sam shook his head. There was no point in learning before, and Dean was on his second to last day at the partial hospitalization program. He had a follow up appointment at a clinic near Sam's new apartment; the fire had been deemed an electrical one, and a sizable check had been sent to him even though he never had renter's insurance. While Sam knew it was all a lie, the check had been enough to use as a deposit for a new apartment near the hospital.

"It's shitty," Marianne declared. She sipped at her hot chocolate and smiled at Sam's stunned expression. "No, it is. Trust me. I've been in it since I was seventeen. It sucked then and it still sucks now."

Sam blinked. "What do you mean?"

"What do you know about bipolar disorder?"

"Nothing," Sam admitted. "I'm new to this whole thing."

"I've got the bad kind," Marianne said, voice soft. "I get psychotic. Dean told me about his, but it sounds like the doctors nipped it in the bud before it got too bad. Lucky for him, at least. He's got a good chance of never lapsing again if he sticks to his meds."

Oh, God. Medication. Sam hadn't wanted to think about that.

Marianne laughed at Sam's expression, but its bitterness was due to her own experience, not Sam's dawning horror. "It's a struggle, you should know that. There might be days he won't want to take the fucking things. He's on two pills now, and if he does good he'll get downgraded to one. That's lucky. I'm on three when I'm good, five when I'm completely fucked up." She shrugged and sipped at her hot chocolate again. "It's a struggle. I look at my pill box and I wonder if it's worth it to take the damn things." Her smile was bitter as she finished the hot chocolate, and it was uncomfortable to look at.

"Then why do you? You're pregnant."

"Yeah. I know. And that's the struggle, really. It would be so easy to stop it, to say that the lithium is going to give her a risk of heart abnormalities. That the antipsychotics aren't really tested in pregnancy. It would be easy to just _stop,_ to say I'm doing it for her and not for me, that I'm trying to be a good mother." Marianne laughed and put down her empty cup of hot chocolate. "But I know it's a lie."

"What are you talking about? Why are you telling me this?"

"I get psychotic," Marianne said softly. "Oh, not right away. I'd be good until about the birth, I think. The last time I thought I didn't need my meds, it took me two or three months to get manic. I'm textbook when I get manic. I don't need to sleep, I talk up a storm, I do a dozen different things at once and I'm fucking good at them, too. But the thing is, I start believing that that's the way I should be. I start thinking I hear things. The demons in the walls, the voice of God, the whole hyperreligious shebang." She looked at Sam's startled face. "Oh, yeah. Demons are common in mental illness, didn't you know? We all see those. We all hear it. Demons fucking love us." Marianne shrugged. "I hear the voice of God telling me I'm special. I have a purpose. I have to hunt them, I have to show the world where the demons are. I'm the one keeping the darkness at bay. I have to draw the circles and paint the spires and chant the verses that will keep the city safe. I'm _important_ that way, I have a purpose."

"Dean just wanted to keep me safe."

Marianne's smile was sad. "Yeah. That's how it starts, you know. That's how it begins. And it slides deeper as you go, when you fall under your own spell and the weight of the psychosis really kicks in. Lord help the fool that tries to stop you. Then they're infected. They're the ones that are sick. They're the ones that are possessed by demons. They're the ones with the black eyes and the soulless stares that you have to fix."

The numb feeling in Sam's gut was churning now. Why did she have to make sense?

Marianne caught Sam's hand in hers, wrenching him from his inner castigation. "Shit happens, Sam. It does all the time. That doesn't make it any easier, but you're not alone in this. There's a bravery in dealing with it. There's a bravery in making that choice to take those pills every morning, to _choose_ to be well, to fit in and be like everyone else."

"There has to be a better way," Sam choked, feeling guilty again. Did he wish this on Dean? Was this all his fault?

"Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes it's all you can do to muddle along."

"How do you cope, then?" Sam asked, voice breaking. "How do you feel like it's not your fault?"

"It's not your fault, Sam," Marianne said, voice soft and clear. "None of this is your doing. You didn't make him depressed. You didn't make him psychotic. You went away and you came back again and there was a fire. You didn't do any of that. You didn't wish him sick. That's not how it works, even if your heart says that it does. Shit happens. Life happens. You just have to roll with it as it comes. It's not easy, but you can do it. People do it all the time."

"But how? How do you do it?"

"One foot in front of the other," Marianne told him bluntly. She shrugged and stood up to head inside and speak to the patients. "You keep going through the motions, acting as if you know what you're doing. The next thing you know, you do."

"Thank you," Sam told her. Amazingly enough, he meant it.

Her grin was heartbreakingly beautiful. "You're welcome."

Sam painted the apartment with Dean that night, a light cream color in the living room. Dean had gotten a tranquil blue for his room, and Sam opted for a deep forest green. "This is that normalcy shit you were talking about, wasn't it?" Dean asked softly, flecks of cream paint on his sweat shirt and nose. He laughed at Sam's guilty look. "Hey, man, I'm not gonna knock it now. I'm just trying to figure out how you thought it was something Dad would ever go for. I mean, knowing what's out there and all."

What's out there. That phrase sounded so simple, yet it carried so much meaning. Neither brother had been able to really explain that other life to the doctors. How do you explain hunting to someone that thinks it's all a myth? It was better to skirt the issue, though Sam wondered how much of that psychosis was because Dean talked about demons.

No, Sam decided after a moment. There was that real fear in Dean that night in the parking lot, in the hospital. He had decked a cop believing him to be possessed and going after Sam. He had attacked hospital staff thinking they were possessed. That had been real panic, desperation in every strained muscle as he had been pinned down and medicated, restrained to a hospital bed and talked to by psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists might have thought the source of the fear was in religion rather than reality, but it didn't change the fact that Dean attacked ordinary people thinking they were demons. Innocent bystanders might have gotten seriously hurt, and Sam knew that Dean would never want that on his conscience.

"I didn't think of it that way," Sam said slowly, looking up at Dean. "You guys didn't need me in hunting, you know? So if you didn't need me, I could go off and be normal."

Dean snorted, and Sam felt as if he was sixteen again. "Dude, you have no idea how it really went down then, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Of course we needed you. And you were plenty good enough, Sam. You did great on that woman in white job with me." Dean shot him a smug look. "I always stuck up for you on that count, at least. I knew you could handle yourself on a job, could keep your head on straight. It's just that Dad didn't want you in on it half the time. A lot of bullshit excuses got thrown around. But I've had time to think about it after you left, trying to figure out why it bothered him so much that you wanted to settle."

"Dean—"

"No, let me finish." Dean's grip on the paintbrush was tight, and Sam couldn't tell if the white on his knuckles was from the paint. "You're all he had left of Mom, you know. He had to protect you and keep you safe. It's my job, too. If something happened to you, then everything else wouldn't matter anymore. It would be like Mom dying all over again."

Sam blinked in surprise. "But you're also..."

"Dude, I look more like Dad. Face it, Sammy. Dad couldn't bear the thought of losing you in a fight. Me, he could lose." Dean didn't face Sam, his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the wall. "I could remember Mom, but I don't look like her. He didn't give a shit about himself apart from fighting the good fight or killing the bad guys. That's what I figured out."

Sam's mouth had gone dry. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"Not your fault, dude. That's just the way it was."

"I wish you told me sooner. You could've come with me."

Dean turned, and Sam could see that same cocksure grin on Dean's face that he had grown up resenting. Dean had always been able to turn on the charm, to get in a girl's pants and just seem so self assured that Sam had never doubted him. "I would've cramped your style."

"You're smart. You just never bothered."

"Why should I? Why learn about European history if I'm going to go digging up bones in a cemetery to torch? What's the point in book learning?"

Sam sighed. "You need to do some researching in hunting."

"That's what you're for," Dean snarked. He turned back to the wall and stepped back to appraise his work. "But yeah. Something's gotta change now, Sammy. Maybe I'll do some kind of classes or something. Body shop, maybe. Gunsmithing. Something."

"You're going to stay here?" Sam asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.

Dean turned around, that trademark grin on his face. Sam wished he could see through it, that he could tell what Dean was really thinking. "Dude, I can't leave you alone. Look at what happened the last time I did."

Sam thought of Jessica, burning on the ceiling. He could feel Constance's ghostly hand pushing into his chest. He thought of the painful loneliness when he first arrived at Stanford.

Sam smiled sadly, shaking his head. "You're impossible."

"I'm a god, bitch."

"Jerk."

Dean's smile was infectious, and they finished the first coat in no time at all.

The following day, Dean was saying goodbye to the staff members and other participants in the partial hospitalization program. Sam stood off to the side, outside the locked doors. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a clear blue sky. It was the kind of day he and Jessica would call beach weather, even if they weren't the kind of students to skive off of classes. It was the kind of day that seemed so perfect that nothing could mar it.

Marianne came outside and smiled at Sam. "Ready for the rest of the world to begin?" she asked, her mouth smiling and tone lilting.

Sam laughed, still facing the sky. "On a day like today, I think I am."

Marianne's laughter carried an edge to it. "Oh, days like today should definitely be cherished, Sammy. Take every single one and hoard them like jewels. You never know how long it's going to last."

Something in her tone sent chills down Sam's spine. He looked down, his brows beginning to furrow in concern. "What?"

She faced him, eyes completely black. "Take care of your brother, Sammy. Dean's so very precious and important, don't you know that? Both of you are so important." Her smile was sinister, sending Sam recoiling. "You have to protect each other from the demons, Sammy. You take care of your brother, Sam. Something's not quite right there."

Stunned to silence, Sam couldn't say anything or even move. He simply watched Marianne turn and walk back into the building. Dean greeted her calmly and gave her a fond hug farewell.

Dean had been released into the wide world, given a relatively good bill of mental health. Now Sam was the one doubting his sanity. He was left wondering if this entire time had been nothing more than an elaborate trick.

Despite the heat, Sam shivered. He couldn't tell Dean about this. Not now, not ever.

"I am my brother's keeper," he murmured to himself. The knowledge was heavy and bitter, weighing him down. This was bound to be just the first in a long line of secrets. He wished for normal, and he still wasn't going to get what he wished for.

 

The End.


End file.
